Fracking takes toll in Pennsylvania, but New Jersey gets bargain

By JAMES M. O’NEILL

Staff Writer |

The Record

The recent boom in natural gas drilling across Pennsylvania has turned some property owners into millionaires. It also has forced some rural communities there to endure swaths of denuded forest, fumes from diesel engines, the rattle of equipment, midnight skies lit up by the lights for well pads, spills of dangerous wastewater, and the leak of explosive methane into their drinking water wells.

In this June 25, 2012 file photo, a crew works on a gas drilling rig at a well site for shale based natural gas in Zelienople, Pa.

One state away, New Jersey residents have enjoyed significant benefits from the gas being mined from the Marcellus Shale Formation through fracking. With an abundance of gas on the market, New Jerseyans have seen significant drops in the price of gas to heat their homes and cook their food – price cuts that are likely to continue this winter. And many coal-fired power plants in the Midwest have switched to natural gas, which has improved the air quality downwind in New Jersey.

“The influx of Marcellus shale gas has paid tremendous benefits for the consumers of New Jersey,” said John Scarlata, vice president of gas supply for PSEG Power. “We have the lowest retail rate in the state, and that’s due to the lower cost of Marcellus gas.”

But in a world of environmental trade-offs, even New Jersey has faced some negative impacts of fracking. Large strips of forest have been cleared to make way for pipeline expansions to bring the gas to the area. The Legislature continues to butt heads with Governor Christie over whether to ban the import of fracking waste into New Jersey for treatment and storage. And environmentalists worry that nitrogen oxide leaking from wells and pipelines will exacerbate the state’s ozone problem.

Natural gas burns more cleanly than coal and should be considered a significant environmental upgrade, advocates say. But it comes with its own environmental risks and disruption.

“Our society uses energy, and natural gas is hands down the cleanest-burning fossil fuel – it has a much smaller carbon footprint than oil or gas,” said Dave Yoxtheimer, a hydrogeologist with the Penn State Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research. “But we need to find a balance between energy demand and environmental risk. With anything, there are pros and cons.”

The natural gas boom is centered around the Marcellus Formation, a former shallow seabed that runs through Pennsylvania and into West Virginia, from 5,000 feet to 9,000 feet below the surface. Some experts guess the formation contains close to 490 trillion cubic feet of gas, enough to handle all of the United States’ gas needs for 25 years.

The boom has been driven by a controversial process called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which involves injecting as much as 5 million gallons of water at high pressure, along with small amounts of chemicals and sand, to break open cracks in shale to release gas for capture.

That process has been combined with horizontal drilling – the ability to drill thousands of feet along the length of a shale deposit, rather than just drilling through it vertically. These techniques have turned formerly inaccessible reserves of gas in the Marcellus Shale Formation into a new, cheap energy resource.

The growth of wells in the Marcellus region has been exponential. In 2005 there were 15 shale wells operating in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio. By 2009 there were more than 2,500. And by the end of last year, the number exceeded 10,000, according to federal data.

That plentiful supply of natural gas has helped New Jersey.

PSEG Power formerly got the bulk of its natural gas from the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana and Texas. Now it gets most from the Marcellus region. PSEG Power buys the gas and provides it at cost to PSE&G for its residential customers. The company serves nearly three-quarters of the state’s population, including 600,000 customers in Bergen and Passaic counties.

Since 2009, PSE&G’s residential gas customers have seen price reductions of 39 percent. And in May the company proposed to cut residential gas bills for the coming winter by 9 percent, which would mean annual savings of nearly $100 for the typical residential heating customer. If approved by the state, the price cut would take effect Oct. 1.

The lower price of natural gas, along with more-stringent federal emissions regulations, has prodded power companies to switch their coal-burning plants to cleaner-burning gas.

Across Pennsylvania, emissions of sulfur dioxide, a pollutant created by burning coal that contributes to soot and particulates, have dropped 76 percent over five years. Similar reductions in emissions occurred in other states whose pollution blows into New Jersey.

The natural gas boom has helped New Jersey to finally meet federal air quality standards for soot, the tiny bits of pollution that can get into human lungs.

Fracking has also created jobs and generated tax revenue in Pennsylvania.

But it has come at a cost to many rural Pennsylvania residents, including Jenny and Tom Lisak, who have run a certified organic farm near Punxsutawney for 30 years. In 2010, when a gas well was being drilled less than a mile from their historic farmhouse, the Lisaks noticed that chalky, oily substances started to appear in the water from their spring. It eventually disappeared, and the state said it wasn’t caused by well drilling, but Jenny Lisak said she never knows whether to trust the spring anymore.

There is also the truck traffic. “It has been absolutely horrendous,” she said. “Gravel trucks, water trucks, fracking wastewater trucks, chemical trucks, you name it, up and down our country roads.” And when the well flares off gas, “the air becomes oppressive, heavy, and there’s a fuel odor,” she said.

The appeal of living in the country has been wiped out for them. “I feel like we’ve been robbed of something,” she said. “We have no peace of mind. We wanted to grow old here, but it’s not a good place to live anymore. It’s not fair.”

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection recently said it had confirmed more than 200 cases in which drinking water supplies have been affected by gas drilling.

Spills of fracking wastewater also have been a concern, because the wastewater that returns to the surface and is temporarily held in open pits can be 10 times saltier than ocean water, and may also contain metals and radioactive material.

“There have been a fairly significant number of minor spills and a handful of cases where a pipe breaks and suddenly there’s a blowout and fluids are leaking uncontrollably at the surface,” said Penn State’s Yoxtheimer.

The gas industry has long argued that fracking is safe. In testimony before a Senate energy committee last year, Lee O. Fuller, vice president of government relations for the Independent Petroleum Association of America, said that “a consensus of regulatory and scientific opinion contradicts claims that hydraulic fracturing has contaminated or poses a serious risk of contaminating underground drinking water supplies.”

He cited former Obama Cabinet secretaries who have said fracking has been done safely.

In New Jersey, the worrisome effects of fracking can be seen primarily in the flurry of projects to expand pipeline capacity to get the gas from the Marcellus region to markets here and in New York.

For instance, a $400 million Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co. project left a barren swath through 7.6 miles of Passaic and Bergen counties, prompting concerns about erosion and road collapses. The project permanently cut down 16 acres of forest in the Highlands watershed and temporarily removed 86 acres more.

Last year the state fined the pipeline company for failing to plant enough shrubs and trees to repair portions of the Bearfort Mountain area in West Milford that had been clear-cut during a previous pipeline expansion. The clear-cutting contributed to erosion after heavy rains in 2011, making Lake Lookover unusable for much of that summer.

Projects to expand pipelines and add more compressor stations continue to be unveiled across the state.

Some environmentalists also worry that the methane and carbon that can leak from well sites, pipelines and compressor stations will exacerbate problems related to climate change. Pennsylvania’s DEP has said such emissions from gas drilling and compressor stations declined as the state imposed more stringent regulations.

Releases of nitrogen oxide are also a concern, environmentalists say, because it is a component of ozone, a pollutant that exacerbates asthma and other respiratory problems.

Despite the recent improvements in air quality, New Jersey still fails to meet the federal health standards for ozone.

“It’s not a Sophie’s Choice that we have – to be poisoned by coal or oil or gas,” said Tracy Carluccio, deputy director of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, which tracks the impact of gas drilling on water supplies. She said New Jersey should be focusing more on developing renewable energy, including solar and wind farms. And she said the state must ramp up its efforts to reduce energy demand, by promoting electric cars, mass transit and energy-efficient buildings.

“Otherwise,” she said, “New Jersey is digging itself further into a polluted hole.”

The recent boom in natural gas drilling across Pennsylvania has turned some property owners into millionaires. It also has forced some rural communities there to endure swaths of denuded forest, fumes from diesel engines, the rattle of equipment, midnight skies lit up by the lights for well pads, spills of dangerous wastewater, and the leak of explosive methane into their drinking water wells.

One state away, New Jersey residents have enjoyed significant benefits from the gas being mined from the Marcellus Shale Formation through fracking. With an abundance of gas on the market, New Jerseyans have seen significant drops in the price of gas to heat their homes and cook their food – price cuts that are likely to continue this winter. And many coal-fired power plants in the Midwest have switched to natural gas, which has improved the air quality downwind in New Jersey.

“The influx of Marcellus shale gas has paid tremendous benefits for the consumers of New Jersey,” said John Scarlata, vice president of gas supply for PSEG Power. “We have the lowest retail rate in the state, and that’s due to the lower cost of Marcellus gas.”

But in a world of environmental trade-offs, even New Jersey has faced some negative impacts of fracking. Large strips of forest have been cleared to make way for pipeline expansions to bring the gas to the area. The Legislature continues to butt heads with Governor Christie over whether to ban the import of fracking waste into New Jersey for treatment and storage. And environmentalists worry that nitrogen oxide leaking from wells and pipelines will exacerbate the state’s ozone problem.

Natural gas burns more cleanly than coal and should be considered a significant environmental upgrade, advocates say. But it comes with its own environmental risks and disruption.

“Our society uses energy, and natural gas is hands down the cleanest-burning fossil fuel – it has a much smaller carbon footprint than oil or gas,” said Dave Yoxtheimer, a hydrogeologist with the Penn State Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research. “But we need to find a balance between energy demand and environmental risk. With anything, there are pros and cons.”

The natural gas boom is centered around the Marcellus Formation, a former shallow seabed that runs through Pennsylvania and into West Virginia, from 5,000 feet to 9,000 feet below the surface. Some experts guess the formation contains close to 490 trillion cubic feet of gas, enough to handle all of the United States’ gas needs for 25 years.

The boom has been driven by a controversial process called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which involves injecting as much as 5 million gallons of water at high pressure, along with small amounts of chemicals and sand, to break open cracks in shale to release gas for capture.

That process has been combined with horizontal drilling – the ability to drill thousands of feet along the length of a shale deposit, rather than just drilling through it vertically. These techniques have turned formerly inaccessible reserves of gas in the Marcellus Shale Formation into a new, cheap energy resource.

The growth of wells in the Marcellus region has been exponential. In 2005 there were 15 shale wells operating in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio. By 2009 there were more than 2,500. And by the end of last year, the number exceeded 10,000, according to federal data.

That plentiful supply of natural gas has helped New Jersey.

PSEG Power formerly got the bulk of its natural gas from the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana and Texas. Now it gets most from the Marcellus region. PSEG Power buys the gas and provides it at cost to PSE&G for its residential customers. The company serves nearly three-quarters of the state’s population, including 600,000 customers in Bergen and Passaic counties.

Since 2009, PSE&G’s residential gas customers have seen price reductions of 39 percent. And in May the company proposed to cut residential gas bills for the coming winter by 9 percent, which would mean annual savings of nearly $100 for the typical residential heating customer. If approved by the state, the price cut would take effect Oct. 1.

The lower price of natural gas, along with more-stringent federal emissions regulations, has prodded power companies to switch their coal-burning plants to cleaner-burning gas.

Across Pennsylvania, emissions of sulfur dioxide, a pollutant created by burning coal that contributes to soot and particulates, have dropped 76 percent over five years. Similar reductions in emissions occurred in other states whose pollution blows into New Jersey.

The natural gas boom has helped New Jersey to finally meet federal air quality standards for soot, the tiny bits of pollution that can get into human lungs.

Fracking has also created jobs and generated tax revenue in Pennsylvania.

But it has come at a cost to many rural Pennsylvania residents, including Jenny and Tom Lisak, who have run a certified organic farm near Punxsutawney for 30 years. In 2010, when a gas well was being drilled less than a mile from their historic farmhouse, the Lisaks noticed that chalky, oily substances started to appear in the water from their spring. It eventually disappeared, and the state said it wasn’t caused by well drilling, but Jenny Lisak said she never knows whether to trust the spring anymore.

There is also the truck traffic. “It has been absolutely horrendous,” she said. “Gravel trucks, water trucks, fracking wastewater trucks, chemical trucks, you name it, up and down our country roads.” And when the well flares off gas, “the air becomes oppressive, heavy, and there’s a fuel odor,” she said.

The appeal of living in the country has been wiped out for them. “I feel like we’ve been robbed of something,” she said. “We have no peace of mind. We wanted to grow old here, but it’s not a good place to live anymore. It’s not fair.”

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection recently said it had confirmed more than 200 cases in which drinking water supplies have been affected by gas drilling.

Spills of fracking wastewater also have been a concern, because the wastewater that returns to the surface and is temporarily held in open pits can be 10 times saltier than ocean water, and may also contain metals and radioactive material.

“There have been a fairly significant number of minor spills and a handful of cases where a pipe breaks and suddenly there’s a blowout and fluids are leaking uncontrollably at the surface,” said Penn State’s Yoxtheimer.

The gas industry has long argued that fracking is safe. In testimony before a Senate energy committee last year, Lee O. Fuller, vice president of government relations for the Independent Petroleum Association of America, said that “a consensus of regulatory and scientific opinion contradicts claims that hydraulic fracturing has contaminated or poses a serious risk of contaminating underground drinking water supplies.”

He cited former Obama Cabinet secretaries who have said fracking has been done safely.

In New Jersey, the worrisome effects of fracking can be seen primarily in the flurry of projects to expand pipeline capacity to get the gas from the Marcellus region to markets here and in New York.